Disappearing Hartlepool: Post Office lined up for Closure

[testing times]

This was in the national press yesterday. I gather the plan is to offer it up for private tenure then if that doesn't get anywhere, they close it.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/19/post-office-jobs-under-threat-as-39-branches-set-for-privatisation

[Hartlepudlion]

No doubt our MP and Councillors will now do their usual, useless posturing.

[steveL]

The plan is to close the present unit and move the service into W.H. Smith but there's no confirmation yet that Smiths are willing to take it on. Either way, it's another empty unit in Middleton Grange

[Land Phil]

Considering Smiths has shrunk to the size of a postage stamp it is quite fitting.

It is hard to fathom why it isn't a big earner if it is always busy, but then again so was M&S. Must be the curse of Hartlepool, bad management.

[not4me]

What with e-mail, on-line shopping and car tax, click and collect and the likes of TNT and other courier firms around you can see how Post Office business will have slumped. Come to think of it, why do people go to the post office these days?

[mk1]

If you used the PO you would know how busy it gets. They sell so much non-mail stuff that  you can wait ages behind someone doing a Passport Application?Car Tax etc. Bulk Mail firms now can just drop it off unstamped and the clerk has to do it all . The PO I use nearly always has 1 clerk doing nothing but this  from about 15:00 to closure. The PO is also the poor man's bank and as such  is looking for ways to make such unprofitable customers go elsewhere.

[Johnny Bongo]

I would assume that many E bayers use the Post Office to send their wares.